1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to management of a data storage medium, and more particularly, to a video contents recording apparatus and a method of managing a data storage medium included therein.
2. Description of the Related Art
Since the development of digital broadcasting, digital video recorders, which may record digital broadcasting programs, have been developed. A digital video recorder may store received broadcasting programs in a data storage medium, such as a hard disc, included in the digital video recorder and display the stored broadcasting programs to a user via a display unit by decoding the stored broadcasting programs according to user commands. Also, the digital video recorder may store a broadcasting program currently being received in the data storage medium while displaying the broadcasting program to a user via a display unit by decoding the broadcasting program.
However, the data storage capacity of the data storage medium included in the digital video recorder is limited. Therefore, to produce vacant space to record new data, deletion of data already stored in the data storage medium is required.
Conventional methods of deleting data stored in a data storage medium include a manual deletion method and an automatic deletion method. In the manual deletion method, data stored in a data storage medium is deleted by a user selecting the data to be deleted and issuing a deletion command. However, in a video recording apparatus supporting only the manual deletion method, all or part of a broadcasting program to be recorded may not be able to be recorded due to a shortage of data recording space when a planned recording is performed due to insufficient data recording space being available in the data storage medium.
In the automatic deletion method, a broadcasting program is automatically deleted after being stored for a predetermined period if a user sets the predetermined time before the broadcasting program is being recorded. However, if data such as a stored broadcasting program is deleted according to a fixed delete condition, it is difficult to take into account the changes in a user's requirements. For example, a program that a user had thought would only need to be stored for a short time when recorded may suddenly need to be stored for a long time.
Also, a conventional video recording apparatus cannot restore deleted data. Accordingly, even though the use of broadcasting programs which have been deleted may be necessary at later time, the data is unavailable.